Humor OE and read this book....

#4
#4
Thanks but no thanks.

Jon%20Meacham.jpg

Jon Meachem, (sort of a cutie, huh?)


This book is a kind of secular liberal version of Jerry Falwell's LISTEN AMERICA! (1980): replete with quotes from "The Founders'" (usually out of context and incomplete), broad generalizations, and politically-correct editorializing. Rather than illuminating and advancing this important field of religion and politics, it obscures and retards it. Of the past twenty years of careful, intelligent scholarship on the subject, he seems wholly unfamiliar.

Therefore, what purports to be a balanced, careful, and accurate study, is in fact a superficial, ideologically biased, and historically inaccurate account. Almost all of the tired liberal secular litany against Christianity is here:

the "ferocity of evangelizing Christians (p. 4);

the "strangling" of religion by "extremism" (p. 5);

a colonial America of "ambitious clerk" (p. 6);

the "criminal" treatment of Native Americans by white settlers committed to converting them to Christianity (p. 45);

the close-minded, bigoted, witch-burning, devil-obsessed Puritans (p. 46-54)--

who persecuted women (especially that "devoted Puritan" Anne Hutchinson); the "African spiritual holocaust" by Christian slave traders and ministers (p. 45).

The entire rich and complex New Light theology of perhaps the greatest eighteenth-century American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, is reduced by Meacham to his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God."

Such strident assaults on the rich "faith of our Fathers" (and-the civilized moral society it produced in America) is really a slander on our history.

The evangelical message of God's love, forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ,comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit, eternal joy in heaven by God's grace, seems a closed book to the author.

He relies on an obscure treaty with the Arab Muslims in Tripoli (the Barbary pirates), drafted in the 1790s, containing the phrase "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion ... " the "Musselmen" need not fear us (p. 103). The fact that this means (to those acquainted with American and diplomatic history) that the United States was not officially Catholic (like Spain) and therefore not an enemy of Islam in the traditional European sense, is not apparent to Meacham.

Extrapolating from a minor document to a founding principle is logically and intellectually suspect, as Daniel Driesbach has shown so well in Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation.

What is the "American Gospel" for Meacham? Well, it certainly is not the Gospels of Christianity, which form the majority of America's religious heritage Rather, it is the "Good News" that American faith is a vague, deistic 'civil religion," which in the public sphere has no doctrinal precepts except tolerance, moral relativism, and the goodness of man; and which relegates any specific faith or morals to private life.

After all, Meacham gladly proclaims: "For the Founding. Fathers, God's grace was universal" (p. 7).

This will come as a surprise to all those Calvinists who predominated in Early America.

But the true religious liberty established by the Constitution and still enjoyed today in America allows expression of personal faith in the public square. The purpose of these principles was to avoid the corruption of the church by the state and the free evangelizing that would create a Christian culture which would legislate moral laws.

Part of Meacham's misunderstanding comes from his over-reliance on the few Founders who were deists (Jefferson, Franklin, Paine).

If he were familiar with the better scholarship of the era, such as Jeffry Morrison's study of the influential President of Princeton (and teacher of James Madison and innumerable other leaders of the early Republic) John Witherspoon and the Founding of The American Republic (Notre Dame University Press, 2005), he would see the Calvinist blending of religion, education, and politics as more representative of the early American ethos.

Only as an example of contemporary liberal sociology and media is this confused book of interest.

It is as if the secular liberal consciousness said "Oh well, I guess religion is here to stay in America, but let's make sure it is a vague, relativistic universalism that has no moral impact on the social order and does not interfere with our favorite sins."

GARRETT WARD SHELDON

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA'S COLLEGE AT WISE

WISE, VIRGINIA

As for the wording in the treaty with the muslims of North Africa who were demanding we pay the dhimmi tax to islam, a very few courageous American men won a very important war and it was a stab in their backs for that wording to be placed in the treaty, not only that congress voted to pay war damage reparations.

There is an older book that is titled something like; "Congress, a history of cowardice," I don't remember the author and can't find it on the internet, but it is a terrific read, from the days of the Barbary Pirates up until when it was written, in the sixties I think, if that were in more peoples hands, we probably wouldn't have these people spending life times in Washington that will do or say most any thing if it is politically expedient to them.
 
#5
#5
Makes me think of a Robert Earl Keen lyric from a song called "Out Here in the Middle".

Out here in the middle with the sinners on the right
Where the ghost of William Jennings Bryan preaches every night
Save your lonley soul, by the bathroom light..
Wish you were here my love...wish you were here my love

As an amateur theologian (I'm a rank amateur at everything I've ever really tried) and a psuedo historian I tend to think that realm politics amplifies the religious belief of the politician. I don't think that the case of the founding fathers is much different.

The rub comes in the historical context. The founding fathers were not life time political appointees. In their day most used religious terms to communicate and relate to what inspired the colonists. To act like these guys were strict evangelicals is just ridiculous. However, they were not on some social gospel kick, like we see today either.

They understood the tyranny and power of the church and frankly wanted the Anglicans, Catholics, and other oppressive religious regimes out of their lives, and I have little doubt that they understood the freedom inherent in the message of the Gospel.

Now before some hippie gets on the board and says "Why was there slavery", please just leave. The founding fathers understood Natural Law. Slavery was as much a part of the history of the world as religion, and it still is in other places in the world. When freedom...real freedom exists...natural corrections will always ensue. That is my theory as to why slavery was eventually abolished.

Long story...I know, but I do think personal faith is overblown in politics. We are all human and prone to error. Even though they did use the language to stir the souls of their constiuents, I don't think the Founders were manipulative with religion like the politicians of our day. It is undeniable that they communicated a great knowlege of real theology.

They were very sincere with their core beliefs. There is a Creator and his will for us is freedom. That is in conflict with what we are taught today. The real problem with the social gospel is that is just humanism in sheeps clothing.
 
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#6
#6
Thanks but no thanks.

Jon%20Meacham.jpg

Jon Meachem, (sort of a cutie, huh?)


This book is a kind of secular liberal version of Jerry Falwell's LISTEN AMERICA! (1980): replete with quotes from "The Founders'" (usually out of context and incomplete), broad generalizations, and politically-correct editorializing. Rather than illuminating and advancing this important field of religion and politics, it obscures and retards it. Of the past twenty years of careful, intelligent scholarship on the subject, he seems wholly unfamiliar.

Therefore, what purports to be a balanced, careful, and accurate study, is in fact a superficial, ideologically biased, and historically inaccurate account. Almost all of the tired liberal secular litany against Christianity is here:

the "ferocity of evangelizing Christians (p. 4);

the "strangling" of religion by "extremism" (p. 5);

a colonial America of "ambitious clerk" (p. 6);

the "criminal" treatment of Native Americans by white settlers committed to converting them to Christianity (p. 45);

the close-minded, bigoted, witch-burning, devil-obsessed Puritans (p. 46-54)--

who persecuted women (especially that "devoted Puritan" Anne Hutchinson); the "African spiritual holocaust" by Christian slave traders and ministers (p. 45).

The entire rich and complex New Light theology of perhaps the greatest eighteenth-century American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, is reduced by Meacham to his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God."

Such strident assaults on the rich "faith of our Fathers" (and-the civilized moral society it produced in America) is really a slander on our history.

The evangelical message of God's love, forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ,comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit, eternal joy in heaven by God's grace, seems a closed book to the author.

He relies on an obscure treaty with the Arab Muslims in Tripoli (the Barbary pirates), drafted in the 1790s, containing the phrase "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion ... " the "Musselmen" need not fear us (p. 103). The fact that this means (to those acquainted with American and diplomatic history) that the United States was not officially Catholic (like Spain) and therefore not an enemy of Islam in the traditional European sense, is not apparent to Meacham.

Extrapolating from a minor document to a founding principle is logically and intellectually suspect, as Daniel Driesbach has shown so well in Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation.

What is the "American Gospel" for Meacham? Well, it certainly is not the Gospels of Christianity, which form the majority of America's religious heritage Rather, it is the "Good News" that American faith is a vague, deistic 'civil religion," which in the public sphere has no doctrinal precepts except tolerance, moral relativism, and the goodness of man; and which relegates any specific faith or morals to private life.

After all, Meacham gladly proclaims: "For the Founding. Fathers, God's grace was universal" (p. 7).

This will come as a surprise to all those Calvinists who predominated in Early America.

But the true religious liberty established by the Constitution and still enjoyed today in America allows expression of personal faith in the public square. The purpose of these principles was to avoid the corruption of the church by the state and the free evangelizing that would create a Christian culture which would legislate moral laws.

Part of Meacham's misunderstanding comes from his over-reliance on the few Founders who were deists (Jefferson, Franklin, Paine).

If he were familiar with the better scholarship of the era, such as Jeffry Morrison's study of the influential President of Princeton (and teacher of James Madison and innumerable other leaders of the early Republic) John Witherspoon and the Founding of The American Republic (Notre Dame University Press, 2005), he would see the Calvinist blending of religion, education, and politics as more representative of the early American ethos.

Only as an example of contemporary liberal sociology and media is this confused book of interest.

It is as if the secular liberal consciousness said "Oh well, I guess religion is here to stay in America, but let's make sure it is a vague, relativistic universalism that has no moral impact on the social order and does not interfere with our favorite sins."

GARRETT WARD SHELDON

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA'S COLLEGE AT WISE

WISE, VIRGINIA

As for the wording in the treaty with the muslims of North Africa who were demanding we pay the dhimmi tax to islam, a very few courageous American men won a very important war and it was a stab in their backs for that wording to be placed in the treaty, not only that congress voted to pay war damage reparations.

There is an older book that is titled something like; "Congress, a history of cowardice," I don't remember the author and can't find it on the internet, but it is a terrific read, from the days of the Barbary Pirates up until when it was written, in the sixties I think, if that were in more peoples hands, we probably wouldn't have these people spending life times in Washington that will do or say most any thing if it is politically expedient to them.

Out of the 7,000 characters of your reply, what is the point?

:blink:
 
#7
#7
Makes me think of a Robert Earl Keen lyric from a song called "Out Here in the Middle".

Out here in the middle with the sinners on the right
Where the ghost of William Jennings Bryan preaches every night
Save your lonley soul, by the bathroom light..
Wish you were here my love...wish you were here my love

As an amatuer theologian (I'm a rank amatuer at everything I've ever really tried) and a psuedo historian I tend to think that realm politics amplifies the religious belief of the politician. I don't think that the case of the founding fathers is much different.

The rub comes in the historical context. The founding fathers were not life time political appointees. In their day most used religious terms to communicate and relate to what inspired the colonists. To act like these guys were strict evangelicals is just ridiculous. However, they were not on some social gospel kick, like we see today either.

They understood the tyranny and power of the church and frankly wanted the Anglicans, Catholics, and other oppressive religious regimes out of their lives, and I have little doubt that they understood the freedom inherent in the message of the Gospel.

Now before some hippie gets on the board and says "Why was there slavery", please just leave. The founding fathers understood Natural Law. Slavery was as much a part of the history of the world as religion, and it still is in other places in the world. When freedom...real freedom exists...natural corrections will always ensue. That is my theory as to why slavery was eventually abolished.

Long story...I know, but I do think personal faith is overblown in politics. We are all human and prone to error. Even though they did use the language to stir the souls of their constiuents, I don't think the Founders were manipulative with religion like the politicians of our day. It is undeniable that they communicated a great knowlege of real theology.

They were very sincere with their core beliefs. There is a Creator and his will for us is freedom. That is in conflict with what we are taught today. The real problem with the social gospel is that is just humanism in sheeps clothing.

You probably think along the same lines as John Quincy Adams.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
John Quincy Adams

"We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!"
John Hancock

I'll throw in some Jefferson to balance it out;

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson

You put lot of good thought into your post Lex.

I'll touch on the slavery issue.

Marxist motivated groups such as the ACLU and NAACP give us a rather distorted view on that topic.

Maybe we'll explore that issue in more depth.

Your Keen lyric is reminiscent of Wolfe;

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.


Out of the 7,000 characters of your reply, what is the point?

:blink:


The point???

Meachem is fos is the point.

Wouldn't that be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer?? :unsure:
 
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#8
#8
You probably think along the same lines as John Quincy Adams.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
John Quincy Adams

"We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!"
John Hancock

I'll throw in some Jefferson to balance it out;

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson

You put lot of good thought into your post Lex.

I'll touch on the slavery issue.

Marxist motivated groups such as the ACLU and NAACP give us a rather distorted view on that topic.

Maybe we'll explore that issue in more depth.

Your Keen lyric is reminiscent of Wolfe;







The point???

Meachem is fos is the point.

Wouldn't that be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer?? :unsure:

His argument is sound.
 
#11
#11
Did you read it?

He actually fights the right battle with public religion in this country.

Yet another quixotic battle, ho hum.

You've heard of the first amendment to the constitution??

The only public religion in this country would be secular humanism if meachem and his like had their way.
 
#12
#12
Yet another quixotic battle, ho hum.

You've heard of the first amendment to the constitution??

The only public religion in this country would be secular humanism if meachem and his like had their way.

Right............. so why comment if you know nothing about the book?
 
#13
#13
Apparently OE has gone big time and started referring to himself in the third person.
 
#15
#15
Does anyone actually read GS's posts or just skip past them to something interesting? Seriously, GS, you gotta start trimming those down.

I'm gonna order this book, OE, it's right up my alley. I'm fascinated.
 
#16
#16
Does anyone actually read GS's posts or just skip past them to something interesting? Seriously, GS, you gotta start trimming those down.

I'm gonna order this book, OE, it's right up my alley. I'm fascinated.

No, way too long and weird. No offense gs.
 
#17
#17
You probably think along the same lines as John Quincy Adams.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
John Quincy Adams

"We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!"
John Hancock

I'll throw in some Jefferson to balance it out;

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson

You put lot of good thought into your post Lex.

I'll touch on the slavery issue.

Marxist motivated groups such as the ACLU and NAACP give us a rather distorted view on that topic.

Maybe we'll explore that issue in more depth.

Your Keen lyric is reminiscent of Wolfe;







The point???

Meachem is fos is the point.

Wouldn't that be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer?? :unsure:


Meachem is one of this country's finest journalists
 
#21
#21
Right............. so why comment if you know nothing about the book?

I read a very good review that gives me enough information to know that I don't want the author to receive a dimes worth of royalties out of my pocket.
:hi:

Does anyone actually read GS's posts or just skip past them to something interesting? Seriously, GS, you gotta start trimming those down.

I'm gonna order this book, OE, it's right up my alley. I'm fascinated.

Here's the short version:

Therefore, what purports to be a balanced, careful, and accurate study, is in fact a superficial, ideologically biased, and historically inaccurate account.
 
#24
#24
Wild thang...you make my head hurt
You make everythang.............Groovy
I said wild thang...

Wild thang...you make my heart lurch
You make everythang...............Groovy
I said wild thang...

You want to know for sure
You need to take the cure

Wild thang,.............meachem ain't cool
he don't make everythang........Groovy
I said wild thang...

Wile thang.................that boy's a fool
he don't make no thang.............Groovy
I said wild thang.
 

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